Family Bathroom

As some of you may be aware, we moved house back in November. Since then we have been busy, one of our first jobs was to create the perfect family bathroom. We have been extremely busy giving our new house some much-needed TLC that it desperately needed.

All rooms in our new house needed work doing in one way or another (we are slowly working our way through). When you move to a new house this is to be expected. The one room we desperately wanted was our bathroom. We had a family vote on what room to start first and the bathroom won.

The previous people who lived here was disabled and was unable to look after the house and the upkeep/DIY jobs. Being disabled also meant a disabled bathroom – this would have been perfect for them but was not suitable or needed for us. The style of the bathroom was just not us.

Take a look

Prior to this video being taken there was also a pull down seat in the shower. We had already removed this to give us more room in the shower as we did not need it.

The bathroom as you can see is only small but we planned to make full use of any space we could. In our old house that too was only a small bathroom and we created a perfect family stylish bathroom. We took the bath out at our old house and put a walk-in shower in place – we soon regretted that as we missed being able to have a bath.

As you can see from above there was hardly any storage space, infact storage space was minimal. A family bathroom to us means storage space is a MUST. I hate having our wash products out on display, I like them stored away when not in use.

The boxed out area was removed and made smaller, allowing room for a bath to go in place and pipe work for the new position of the new radiator.

Measurements was then done to re position the pipework.

How we created our family bathroom

We set out by measuring our bathroom and then took a look online to see what sort of bathroom we would like. We firstly chose our colour, then our design. We then looked at the measurements of our chosen design to see what we could make fit and work best with the bathroom space we have.

We wanted maximum storage and a nice light fresh look. We found this set…..What do you think?

This is the Ardenno bathroom set from B&Q in white gloss. We found the measurements with this set fitted perfectly in the small space and gave us the storage space wanted along with the light coloured fresh look we was looking for.

The wall tile we chose was Haver sand. We liked the detail within the tile and the tile isn’t too dark, we thought it would pair together nicely with the bathroom suite.

The bath is a Cooke & Lewis Conway steel bath.

The floor tile we chose was Nordico vintage beigewe wanted to pair the tile colours together as closely as we could. This tile gives a nice wooden flooring effect but infact its porcelain with a vintage design and is a stunning tile.

We wanted a bathroom that had plenty of storage space so that it didn’t become a dumping ground of clutter. We put the time and effort in to the measuring, planning and design of our family bathroom, checking those measurements and colour schemes twice as you can’t be too careful.

Just because we have a small bathroom it didn’t mean we had to compromise on style too just because of its size. Any size bathroom can be beautiful no matter how small.

With the bathroom being a small room we didn’t want to over clutter the room, we wanted to keep it simple with soft natural shades. We are going to add splashes of colour within the furnishing of the room, we are yet to get a blind and new towels etc.

So here is our new and improved family bathroom

As we said above the soft furnishings are yet to be added but we now have a more usable and welcoming family bathroom that we done by ourselves and love.

We moved where the position of where the radiator was, it was taking up space next to the sink so this was removed and it freed up valuable space. The whole bathroom was emptied, re-styled and re-positioned.

Ian is a fully qualified electrician and one of his hates is mini trunking. As you can see from the video of the old bathroom it has mini trunking. All cables are now safely behind the wall. We have also tried to hide as many pipes as possible we think it looks much tidier.

From this

To this

We now have storage space

A much more family friendly bathroom that is more us and our style. We all got stuck in and helped and that makes our bathroom even more special. We try our best to do as much of our own jobs around the house as we can. Making our home full of very special memories that are made with love.

Home makeover

It has been a while since our house has seen a lick of paint and had a home makeover, well the lounge and hall anyway. We spent a while deciding on the colours we wanted to go due to us decorating the main areas of our home we wanted to get it right. I have been wanting to go a little warmer in colour and Ian has been wanting to stay a lighter colour. We have always gone for the cream/magnolia range in colour so I thought why not go for the change wanted and go warmer in colour.

I stopped off during my lunch break one day and got some samples/testers as we like to put these on the wall and see what colour grows on us. We planned to decorate over the half term week as I had booked time off work, I got told I had holiday left to use up at work so I thought oh well I may as well use it and make use of the time off. With it being half term we had a day where we prepared the areas being painted and then we had a good few days of day trips and fun so the half term week was not all about decorating and the kids be bored as that just would not be fair on them.

Once we had agreed on the colours we wanted we went on a shopping trip armed with a long list of items needed for our home makeover.

A small but expensive shopping trip to collect all what we needed for the home makeover.

Our lounge is not a very big lounge, infact it’s tiny, but we did put an archway in by knocking a wall down between the lounge and dining area so this made it more open for us and lets more light in the room.

I have been doing some online shopping and ive been looking at patterns and colours I would like to add at a later date, I have found some nice curtains I like, new cushion covers, a nice rug for the lounge and even a nice lamp for some mood lighting. On the wall we are looking to update the family photo’s as this has not been done for a while so it will be nice to put some up to date ones up.

We found having a home makeover has given us loads of new daring ideas for adding colours and patterns to our home. There will be lots of changes happening to our home over the next few weeks, I already have plans for a furniture change around.

We have changed from the top colour to the bottom colour.

Finished colour.

The decorating took us four days to complete from start to finish, we are so pleased it is now done. We didn’t want to start the glossing until the kid’s was back at school, we did get quick drying gloss to save us from any disasters as it is so easy to forget the doors are wet…….As Ian soon found out, and there was me worrying about the kid’s touching the wet paint!

What sort of colours do you tend to choose for your home?

About us

Welcome to our family blog. We are Ian & Anita from North London.
We have three teenage sons - Danny, Lee & Bradley.
We are a fun thrill-seeking family who are always planning our next family adventure together.
We all like to write on our family blog - the boy's have their own space on the blog called 'kid's corner' this is where you will find the boy's written posts.
Thank you for stopping by.